Mobile

Atlas Mobile Calendar Brings Real-Time Scheduling

If you could have a mobile Facebook timeline for your appointments, would you use it? If you're bored with your old online calendar, and are looking for a more efficient way to schedule meetings and tasks, it may be time to check out Atlas, a new smartphone-focused calendar debuting on the App store today.

Atlas is a mobile scheduling calendar app intended to make making plans painless by allowing you to schedule anything with anyone on any calendar platform. Right now it's offered on the iPhone and works on the iPad, but versions for other tablets are planned.

The market is already crowded with competitors like Task, iCal, and Google. But they're all made for desktop scheduling, and this service is designed specifically for mobile.

Here's the difference: When you're sent an invite via Google, you get a message offering a time. That's it. If the time doesn't work you have to go through an annoying and time consuming email chain of possible other times. This service offers multiple options for availability so you can literally be on the same page as your colleagues and save time emailing back and forth.

You can merge calendars if you're an Atlas user, but if you're an Outlook user for instance, you can still get an event invite and use the service without downloading the app because it syncs with all calendars. That's right, all calendars set up in your phone's calendar settings will be read and writable from Atlas. And you can suggest times for meetings just by touching empty time slots. Easy.

"We want to give people a contextualized way to communicate availability," says co-founder and chief executive Hunter Gray.

The Los Angeles-based company was founded by Gray and Michel Bayan who linked up at the end of 2010 after successful careers in direct sales and digital agencies, respectively. The duo bootstrapped for a year, putting in about $80,000 of their own money before building their team of 8 and raising about $700,000.

Gray and Bayan say the app is more than just a Tungle.me replacement, describing Atlas as a Facebook card for upcoming events. Think Facebook for scheduling.

Unlike other similar apps in the market like Doodle and ScheduleOnce, which focus more on web scheduling as opposed to design, or services like Sunrise and Fantastical which go the opposite route, Atlas' founders say their product is both useful and aesthetically pleasing.

"Atlas is nestled right in between the two," explains Gray, who expects the app to bridge the gap between form and function and elbow its way into both market shares. He wants to make the smartphone people's scheduling and planning hub. "We're trying to bring useful to sexy."

You don't even have to download the app to enjoy it. Right now Atlas users can invite non-users to events. Non-users receive an email and can either choose to download Atlas and respond, or to respond from a web interface. No matter which direction they go, the user experience is the same.

"Our perfect customer is anyone who uses a calendar daily, but doesn't share a calendar with other people," Gray explains.

Co-founder and chief marketing officer Bayan says Atlas specifically appeals to people in sales, real estate and business development. Now you don't have to have separate calendars for your boss or your personal life, but can merge them all together. And the biggest advantage is that it's all accessible, and designed for the smartphone.

Atlas is offered as a freemium app, with paid options in the works. Exact details of the pro feature are still being ironed out, but right now the premium upgrade gives users more advanced scheduling features as well as their own web URL, allowing Atlas scheduling even when receiving invites from non-users.

For those worried about security and privacy, Atlas maintains that they do not read attached user emails. They say the idea is to stay out of the inbox as much as possible.

While it's still early, the founders say they could envision the app incorporating bump technology to find compatible calendar times, using sponsored content to offer events and a revenue source, and even potentially offering messaging and video conferencing options.

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